Australians urged to embrace architectural roots

AUSTRALIA should be ditching designer ‘cookie cutter’ houses and re-embracing its regionalism if it wants to be resilient to increasingly catastrophic weather events, according to one of the country’s leading architects.

National president of the Institute of Architects, Shannon Battisson, said homebuyers have in recent years developed a taste for beautiful ‘off-plan’ homes that look the same in every town across the country.

But with some parts of Australia regularly ravaged by floods, others razed by fire and the unluckiest ones contending with both extremes of the meteorological spectrum, what suits one area doesn’t always suit the other.

“We have to stop building one house type and building it across the country and being surprised when it doesn’t handle that particular climate well,” Ms Battisson said.

Queenslanders’ houses are named for the area they are found – raised up on stilts to keep people away from the mozzies, up in the breeze and away from floods, she said.

In colder climates and bushland, houses were more compact, low and closed so they could be shut up and the gutters and roofs more easily accessed and protected.

Small “lightweight” homes along the bush-lined coast of NSW were built with “a small element of acceptance” that they might be destroyed in a big fire but would be less expensive to replace.

“Now we’re building the same volume build they’d build in a city area on those coastal town blocks, so when a fire goes through, the massive loss of materials and embodied energy and, in really horrific circumstances lives and livelihoods, are exacerbated,” Ms Battisson said.

“We have chosen, and our government has supported that choice, to build in low lying areas we know flood.

“But instead of building houses that are raised and have an element of protection, we’re building houses on the ground that have no ability to withstand even the smallest flood.”

Built at low cost, they’re homes that shift the burden risk onto families often in quite low income communities.

“We shouldn’t be building in those areas unless we’re building houses that are designed to mitigate that flood risk,” Ms Battisson said.

“We have kind of lost that… innate knowledge. There’s way too much of us looking in magazines or in our media.

“There were a lot of reasons we built those ways and we need to celebrate building a house that suits the place where it’s going to be built and the climate and the conditions it might be up against.

“That loss of our regionalism is actually feeding into our risk.”

The Bushfire Building Council of Australia said 2.5 million Australians live in high risk areas and 90 per cent of the buildings within them are not resilient to fire.

Aside from the human risk, that equates to about $1 trillion of property at risk.

Homeowners have never been more vulnerable, said the council’s chief executive, Kate Cotter.

“We’re witnessing… people’s repeated suffering. What used to be more isolated bushfires, floods and storms are now affecting everybody,” she said.

“When we had those bushfires, people were surrounded for 74 days and then they had floods and landslips and storms.

“I think that awareness escalated. We certainly noticed a massive increase both inquiries to help after a disaster but also people wanting to prepare for the next one.”

The council with experts, communities and governments to encourage disaster and climate adaptation.

Last year it announced its FORTIS House project, which provides free architectural drawings, specifications and handbooks to make it easier and more affordable for Australians to build sustainable and resilient houses.

The prefabricated homes – available to purchase for between $300,000 and $700,000 – are designed with non-combustible, robust, quality construction and materials, the website says.

One of its features is a protective outer shell that can be “completely closed to provide disaster resilience, energy efficiency, ventilation and security”.

They are also water self-sufficient, 100 per cent electric and solar powered.

But the answer can’t only be to build brand new homes with the latest technology, Ms Cotter said.

“It is absolutely possible to retrofit homes, 90 per cent of the problem is about dealing with what we’ve got,” she said.

“But approaches that suit different climates and risk exposures are preferable: a simpler roof line, a more solid building when we’re getting more thermal comfort for people in heatwaves that also tend to be more resilient. Custom glass windows help through bushfires and storms.

“There are lots of approaches to building appropriately for the location but also avoiding the areas where we can’t minimise the risk through better building.

“Flood plains are one area where we can’t design our way out of that problem.”

– BY KATELYN CATANZARITI/ AAP